The Odyssey eBook

“I was not there,” answered Euryclea,
“and do not know; I only heard them groaning
while they were being killed. We sat crouching
and huddled up in a corner of the women’s room
with the doors closed, till your son came to fetch
me because his father sent him. Then I found
Ulysses standing over the corpses that were lying
on the ground all round him, one on top of the other.
You would have enjoyed it if you could have seen him
standing there all bespattered with blood and filth,
and looking just like a lion. But the corpses
are now all piled up in the gatehouse that is in the
outer court, and Ulysses has lit a great fire to purify
the house with sulphur. He has sent me to call
you, so come with me that you may both be happy together
after all; for now at last the desire of your heart
has been fulfilled; your husband is come home to find
both wife and son alive and well, and to take his
revenge in his own house on the suitors who behaved
so badly to him.”

“My dear nurse,” said Penelope, “do
not exult too confidently over all this. You
know how delighted every one would be to see Ulysses
come home—­more particularly myself, and
the son who has been born to both of us; but what
you tell me cannot be really true. It is some
god who is angry with the suitors for their great
wickedness, and has made an end of them; for they
respected no man in the whole world, neither rich nor
poor, who came near them, and they have come to a
bad end in consequence of their iniquity; Ulysses
is dead far away from the Achaean land; he will never
return home again.”

Then nurse Euryclea said, “My child, what are
you talking about? but you were all hard of belief
and have made up your mind that your husband is never
coming, although he is in the house and by his own
fire side at this very moment. Besides I can give
you another proof; when I was washing him I perceived
the scar which the wild boar gave him, and I wanted
to tell you about it, but in his wisdom he would not
let me, and clapped his hands over my mouth; so come
with me and I will make this bargain with you—­if
I am deceiving you, you may have me killed by the most
cruel death you can think of.”

“My dear nurse,” said Penelope, “however
wise you may be you can hardly fathom the counsels
of the gods. Nevertheless, we will go in search
of my son, that I may see the corpses of the suitors,
and the man who has killed them.”

On this she came down from her upper room, and while
doing so she considered whether she should keep at
a distance from her husband and question him, or whether
she should at once go up to him and embrace him.
When, however, she had crossed the stone floor of
the cloister, she sat down opposite Ulysses by the
fire, against the wall at right angles {180} [to that
by which she had entered], while Ulysses sat near
one of the bearing-posts, looking upon the ground,
and waiting to see what his brave wife would say to
him when she saw him. For a long time she sat
silent and as one lost in amazement. At one moment
she looked him full in the face, but then again directly,
she was misled by his shabby clothes and failed to
recognise him, {181} till Telemachus began to reproach
her and said: